[Suggestion] Nerf / Balance Banshee

Discussion in 'PlanetSide 2 Gameplay Discussion' started by Tr34, May 11, 2021.

  1. Johannes Kaiser

    While this is true, most of thease options are also somewhat avoidable by a pilot with some awareness and experience. Only the truly greedy pilots, the inexperienced ones, and the ones that have already eaten some damage die to regular AA options. The other ones are very dependant on both skill gap between players as well as luck.
    The only options that are readily available in the places most frequented by A2G farmers (places with mostly to only infantry) are the launchers and mass-smallarms, and they are usually even less effective against pilots with some experience and a healthy dose of restraint. Add to that that against most A2G weapons - especially Banshee in personal experience - you die way faster than you can line up a shot (or even less lock on) if the pilot knows your general location. As soon as the pilot got a baseline of skill in the air, it gets very hard to muster anything amounting to meaningful resistance. And if you get something going, say by pulling a Skyguard, they'll just piss off and pester some other poor souls elsewhere, leaving your nanite investment to rot and be useless.
    • Up x 5
  2. JustGotSuspended


    I'll dismiss the other stuff for obvious reasons. This logic however I want to point out because it shows we should all be on the same page.

    Lockons aren't free, but they do cost less than a MAX to equip, and are easier to switch out of because they lack a nanite cost. Of course, bursters should be more effective than a lockon. Whether they are is debatable, however consider this:

    Maxes cost 450, and the cost of fully certing the max out for AA is similar to that of an A2G loadout. As a burster MAX, you can potentially deal some damage to air, in hopes of scaring them away, and occasionally killing them. While you may be able to go head to head against PPA, you will lose to banshee, airhammer and rocket pods of whatever type in a 1v1. ESFs cost 350, and are also single manned. Why is it they have better weapons and mobility and health and versatility than something that's more expensive?

    Well you wouldn't be so far from the truth. An invisible class in an MMO FPS with the ability to 1hk in a clientsided game? You've got the right conclusion, but seem to deliberately be falsifying the hypothesis.

    That's right, there's a lot of broken things in this game such as cloak, A2G, harassers, shotguns.....

    And there's a lot of trolls that are fully aware of this and abuse it everyday, and then for some reason try to deny the fact that playstyle is broken.
    • Up x 2
  3. DarkQuark



    This without a doubt. Not only broken mechanics but some bad ideas as well.

    For example that storm was a bad idea. Cloaked flashes are a bad idea. A bad mechanism would be the whole road kill thing or harassers basically being fast moving light tanks.
    • Up x 1
  4. Liewec123

    Personally I'd reduce banshee splash damage by a fair bit and slightly increase its COF
    I'd also increase AHs COF by a fair bit and slightly reduce its splash.
    And also slightly increase PPA velocity.
    • Up x 1
  5. JustGotSuspended


    Personally I'd invert the banshee so when you use it you shred yourself to pieces and are left with a 30s respawn to reflect on what a loser you are while everyone tryna enjoy and improve their infantry game doesn't even acknowledge your brief existence.

    but thats just me
    • Up x 1
  6. Liewec123

    i'd be fine with that too :p
    • Up x 1
  7. RabidIBM

    This is a big part of the problem, you don't respect other rolls, or recognize that they need to be there. I know you're going to back peddle with "I was just joking", and I'll give that as much credence as I gave Wrel when he was "only joking" about test playing this game with no FF for a couple days.

    Air to ground needs to be there. If air couldn't significantly do any damage to the ground, then there would be no need for surface to air or air to air. Hey, at this point let's take the vehicles out too. Just make this game exclusively IVI. It's not like that would drive any player base away or anything.
  8. JustGotSuspended


    Nope I was being pretty serious.

    Yeah no. There's isn't a NEED for HESH, AA, bolters, whatever - at least not in this state. It's just broken stuff people use to pad their stats or scrape together a few kills if they're too troubled to learn to manage actual weapon/class mechanics.

    Most of the playerbase left a long time ago. What remains are trolls and people who don't really care. Removing all this garbage cancer would probably bring back more players than people left. Anyways it's not like you can't replace half those broken playstyles by automation or storms or whatever. Personally I wouldn't include those types of toxic playstyes as an essential part of the game, they didn't exist in this state before and the game was much better off lol
  9. Arpheus

    You took a wrong NC gun (the M20) for the comparison which explains your stats. You need to compare the M30 Mustang AH (https://planetside.fandom.com/wiki/M30_Mustang_AH) which is the Air Hammer Anti Infantry Nose Gun for the NC and you will see that KPU is higher on Air Hammer while the Banshee wins on some other stats.
    You can kill more people in one magazine with air hammer than you can with banshee but the banshee has some advantage at range while having less potential for many kills with one magazine.

    Here the corrected data from the last year:

    ESF AI KPH
    ESF AI KPU
    ESF AI avg. BR
    ESF AI total kills

    I also feel that the AI ESF Guns leave pretty much no counterplay. PPA can be survived at least with Flak armor but can suppress really well from very far range while Air Hammer and Banshee are pretty much instant kills.

    If you nerf Banshee I ask for an Air Hammer Nerf at the same time. Both are really strong and you can't even get out of the spawn room to AA them because of nearly instant death and when a great pilot strafes around with high speed there is no way to lock onto them and all that is left is to pull a dual burster Max (you might still die) or TR Striker which will still not kill them fast enough while strafing. At least you might win some time that way before they re-engage.

    Anti Air needs to become far stronger especially if ESF come close.
    • Up x 3
  10. JibbaJabba

    -Nemesis/Hawk/Grounder <-Change classes, or if already heavy give up infantry & antimax power.
    -Annihilator <- LOL. Nefted so bad might as well give you a shoulder massage.
    -Striker <- Viable. You only have to give up your entire faction 2/3rds of the time.

    OH but you meant "utterly stop playing what you're playing and switch from rock to paper". Yeah, that's a great mechanic for people to have fun...

    -Burster <- Spend more nanites than the pilot himself, completely give up anything you were previously doing.
    -Skyguard <- THIS is your counter. It's also 100% useless against *ANYTHING* else in the game.

    -Walker <- Yes, infantry carry these in their pocket. They'll chase off air, not kill it.
    -Ranger <- Better at chasing off, never kills. Leaves you vulnerable to everything else in the game.
    -The AP cannon of any tank other than the Powler <- Yes, stop playing what you're playing and go pull a tank!
    -Literally any A2A build of ESF <- Ah the classic "get gud". Sure people will pickup the legendary **** flight mechanics just to do this. Most can't. Those that can, won't because we're trying to play something else in the sandbox.
    -Dalton in the right hands <- A dalton main. Oh what fun.
    -or the masses of potential victims all noticing the threat and shooting it with their primaries because that works too.

    Don't curr... Just shuttup and abuse the game and slowly choke out the new players. Be happy. Nobody cares what an A2G farmer thinks about game balance.

    Something consistent in this game: People abusing the imbalances then sucking themselves off about how good they are and it's not about the imbalance at all.

    The only people better at this than Infiltrators are A2G farmers. At least MAX drivers are honest about the imbalance and their own suck.
    • Up x 4
  11. f0p5

    Jesus, nerf this and nerf that..only OP thing is in this game is faction spesific launchers and Magrider after when magburner is in passive slot.
  12. JibbaJabba

    So... nerf that thing in particular?
    • Up x 4
  13. BlackFox

    Best thing would be to make a whole balance overhaul update based carefully on detailed, analyzed data - but new content is more important it seems
    • Up x 2
  14. Demigan

    The thing with aircraft weapons is that you can't really protect yourself. If you changed it's damage output the only solution is to make the weapon so weak that it's practically unuseable.

    The solution isn't to nerf the aircraft weapons, but to buff the protective measures their targets can make. If it becomes hard to find or hit the target then their danger decreases and it becomes a more enjoyable experience to fight against them.
    To make sure such buffs are actuallt in use they need to be useable against not just aircraft, but also against other threats.

    Examples:
    - let players deploy a distortion canopy. This distorts the area beneath it from above and makes identifying a target harder. The farther you are the more distorted it gets.
    - deploying something requires more planning and doesn't protect against a sudden attack. So letting some classes equip a similar distortion field as class-ability would help.
    - create small deployable versions of the construction shield canopy and citadel shields to protect an area, with health ofcourse to be whittled down giving time to those beneath time to escape to safety. Add class-ability versions as well.
    - add weapons and abilities that can create light concussive effects in vehicles and aircraft. It reduces their accuracy and movement to give infantry a chance to fight them (and contribute more easily in larger vehicle battles).
  15. BlackFox

    I know it's borrowed from Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but I think it would fit into PS2 as well:
    - A deployable, multitube missile launcher (player made base, or by an engineer) that can lock on to vehicles marked with something like a laser marker. Of course only on targets within a certain range around it, with a cool down and a number of placement limit to prevent spam.
    Giving only the engineer (or the owner) and/or his squad access to the targeting computer would prevent randoms from marking everything.

    In general it's always better to buff counters than nerfing something
    • Up x 1
  16. Demigan

    In my language they have a saying. "Better to steal a good idea than to make a bad one". Especially in an industry that thrives on taking what works from other games to create a variation and offer a different experience.

    I would still allow all players to access such a device, although with the option to restrict it temporarily. Additionally you could add nanite costs to acquiring the laser designation device for everyone not the owner and/or a nanite cost for firing it.
    Talking about borrowing, UT's orbital laser canon has a laser designator that would seem perfectly suitable for PS2. The beam is highly visible and requires the player to mark the same position for about 2 seconds before the shot is fired, making targeting moving targets hard unless you aim for the ground.
  17. Johannes Kaiser

    Tome it feels like to balance things out it only needs 2 steps:
    1) Reduce all aircrafts' HP pool or alter their resistances so actual AA options are not "viable options to tickle" but "the way to clear up the air". The you at least get something mileage out of switching class/playstyle. The power to defend yourself, as opposed to the theoretical ability to do that like we have it now.
    2) Remove all primary noseguns with an AoE. We got the rocketpods for that, and they have vastly reduced RoF and ammo pool to compensate.

    Those two changes mean that pilots now have to aim perfectly on target (good pilots will still manage, but it takes more time to get right) and are more vulnerable to what is supposed to counter them. Means if they go hunting with their noseguns they need time to aim, which is time the defenders also have to aim at *them*. For rocket pods this will do less, but the vulnerability is still there for experienced AA players and they'll need to go pick up new ammo soon anyway.
    • Up x 1
  18. Tr34

    I agree. Current AA options just "tickle" aircraft, nothing more.
    • Up x 1
  19. XRIST0

    get real, its so easy until you pull one and try it yourself.. please, go grab a mossie and capture some gameplay of you just easily mowing down infantry with it, you have to be very close to be doing so and in any decent size battle you wouldnt last 3 seconds without being bombarded with gunfire and lock ons.. same goes with all esf and their anti infantry weapons, mustang or the vs variant whatever its called is not any less annoying.. if not worse ? NC have a giant shotgun that literally instagib you, VS basically have a giant lasher on theirs but banshee is the problem apparently.. if youre getting killed by this often something is wrong with your team and their lack of awareness..

    ESF are very easily detered if you bothered to do anything about it, and this is coming from someone that rarely uses one .. and know its not an easy task to just fly somewhere and start mowing down infantry, its not as simple as that.
  20. MonnyMoony


    Well, yes it is a problem. The banshee massively out performs both of the NC and VS weapons as shown by the stats linked in the second post.